Posts tagged "Ka"

Brooklyn rapper Ka has a flickering, incantory take on New York boom-bap that comes entirely from the man himself; he barely ever works with anyone else, in any capacity. But Ka recently formed a new Manchurian Candidate-inspired duo with the producer Preservation, whose style is, if anything, even more minimal than his own. Together, they've… More »

In the annals of rap history, Fat Joe holds a curious distinction. Joe is a just-OK rapper, a guy who fills space just fine on tracks but who almost never says anything that'll rattle around in your consciousness. But Joe has been on more great songs than any other just-OK rapper in history. The list… More »

The Brooklyn rapper Ka is a model of DIY music-making. Generally, he produces everything himself, releases and distributes it on his own, and shoots his own videos -- all while holding down a day job as a firefighter. That intense, inward focus has done great things for developing his meditative, impressionistic voice, and the last… More »

The DIY Brooklyn rapper and producer Ka made the meditative, mythic album The Night's Gambit, one of last year's best rap LPs, and he's already followed it up with the only-available-on-CD EP 1200 B.C. Now, he's become the latest artist to participate in this summer's Adult Swim Singles Series, which has brought u… More »

Last Friday was the Fourth Of July, which meant we didn't run one of these lists. But the videos kept piling up, and so we're giving you our picks for this week's five best videos, as well as, without comment, last week's picks. You deserve to have a lot of shit to watch on your… More »

Last year, the meditative Brooklyn rapper and producer Ka self-released the dark and absorbing The Night's Gambit, one of last year's best rap albums. This year, he followed it up with his 1200 B.C. EP, which isn't even available digitally. If you wanted it, you had to mail-order the thing and wait for the… More »

For the last several years Adult Swim has curated a series of singles released throughout the summer. They've put out some fantastic tracks in the past, but for the fifth series, coming this summer, they've completely outdone themselves, enlisting a dizzying array of artists from Speedy Ortiz to Tim Hecker, from Deafheaven to Run The… More »

Last year, there was one album -- Kendrick Lamar's Good Kid, m.A.A.d. City -- that united virtually the entire rap-listening public in adoration. This year, no such luck. Many heard my #1 pick of the year (and you can probably already guess what it is) as the work of a sonic visionary, and plenty more… More »

Earlier this year, the Brooklyn rapper/producer Ka released the heavy, meditative The Night's Gambit, one of the year's best rap albums. Ka doesn't just make all his own beats and self-release his albums; he also directs and edits the noirish, atmospheric black-and-white videos he makes for his songs. The new clip for the tingly,… More »

You could make a strong case that The Night's Gambit, the album that the Brownsville, Brooklyn rapper Ka released last month, is the year's best rap album. The album only had one guest-verse (from like-minded blunted maverick Roc Marciano), and Ka produced all of the album's moody, contemplative beats himself. Ka also releases hi… More »

A week and a half after Jay-Z's Magna Carta Holy Grail went out to a million Samsung users, another long-pedigreed Brooklyn rapper found an unconventional way to release an album. But this one was different: A few cardboard boxes of CDs and vinyl, carted out to a West Village street corner. Before the Brownsville rapper/producer… More »

Ka is a low-key, hazed-out rapper/producer from Brownsville, Brooklyn, and Grief Pedigree, the album he released last year, is a slow-burner cult favorite full of muttered tough-talk and psychedelic, virtuosic boom-bap. Over the weekend, he released another new album, The Night's Gambit, selling it to fans on a New York street corner late at night. More »

For a while now, Long Island rap veteran Roc Marciano has been making dusky, spare New York rap that recalls the mid-'90s without ever translating as retro-rap; his great new album Reloaded is out next week. On one Reloaded track, Ka, a relative newcomer from Brooklyn who's been doing great work in a similar style,… More »

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As his band traveled through a lightning storm somewhere in the American Midwest, Ariel "Pink" Rosenberg yelled at me over the telephone. It was April 2005, and I was holed up in the spare bedroom of a rented house in York, PA, repeatedly posing pre-prepared interview questions in order to be heard over the noise… More »

Jay Z bought the Swedish company Aspiro's streaming music service Tidal less than a month ago, but that didn't stop him from rolling out his rebranded product today with lots of fanfare from his famous friends. Rumors before the 5PM livestream suggested that Jay's newfangled Tidal would be launched with exclusive… More »

Jay Z is not playing with his big rollout of the streaming service Tidal. After many big stars tweeted their support last night, those same stars have shown up in a new 30-second spot for the service's big relaunch today. In the ad, we see a collection of luminaries -- Jay, Kanye West,… More »

Jay Z wants you to know that Tidal, the Scandinavian high-fidelity streaming service that he bought earlier this month, is a big deal. So he didn't just get some of music's biggest stars to tweet about the service's big relaunch, which is happening today. He got them all to change their social media… More »

Burger Records held their fourth annual Burgerama festival at the Observatory in Santa Ana this past weekend. The two-day fest featured appearances from bands like Together PANGEA, Fidlar, La Luz, Gang Of Four, Public Access T.V. and many, many more. Ty Segall and Weezer were the headliners, and Rivers Cuomo's dad Frank Cuomo made… More »